By ELISSA GOOTMAN

Published: August 31, 2000

In an effort to build up the ranks of taxi drivers, the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission is considering a proposal to encourage police officers to moonlight behind the wheels of yellow cabs, but the plan is being greeted coldly by police officers.

Under the proposal, officers would be able to waive an 80-hour training course and a drug test that taxi drivers must take. Officials with the commission, which is scheduled to discuss the plan on Sept. 28, say the taxi industry proposed it as a way to deal with a driver shortage. They said police officers were an obvious choice, because they had completed driver training courses and were randomly tested for drug use.

But though many officers -- who say they are underpaid -- do hold down second jobs, many note that they already spend their days dealing with the public and patrolling the streets, not to mention fielding complaints from cabbies themselves.

''It just doesn't appeal to me,'' said Rick Lee, the community affairs officer of the First Precinct, in Lower Manhattan. ''I think there should be other ways we should be compensated. We should maybe make a little better salary.'' He called the plan insulting.

The taxi owners realize officers may not be interested, but they thought it was worth a try, said Diane McGrath-McKechnie, the chairwoman of the commission. ''The economy is very, very strong right now, and they're having more difficulty than usual in recruiting drivers,'' she said.

She estimated that at any given time, 8 to 10 percent of the city's more than 12,000 medallions were unused, primarily because of the driver shortage.

The shortage is so acute, said the spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, Maureen Connelly, that some fleet operators are willing to lease taxis for shorter periods than the standard 12-hour shift.

''It's something that a police officer might want to do for four or six hours on a night or a day off, instead of working as a security guard,'' Ms. Connelly said.

The proposal, which was first reported yesterday in The New York Post, will be a hard sell. Some officers said that they were all too familiar with the woes and perils of cabby life. ''People drunk, people not paying, people making a mess in the back of the cab,'' said Officer Thomas Reilly, 29, of the First Precinct. ''I've seen a lot of cabdrivers. I see a lot of the problems they have.''

Other officers said that after eight hours patrolling the streets and dealing with the public, the last thing they wanted was a part-time job that would put them back there.

''Guys here, if they work another job, they're going to go out and get another job that's not high stress, something that they like to do,'' said a longtime officer at the Fifth Precinct station house in Lower Manhattan.

An undercover officer called the proposal a ''slap in the face,'' saying, ''It's just an acknowledgment that we have to supplement the money we ain't making.'' He added, ''Nobody's asking the bus drivers to take taxi jobs.''

Taxi drivers' fraternal organizations blame the commission and what they describe as its unfair regulations for the driver shortage. The commission is ''an agency that has completely lost touch with reality,'' said Biju Mathew, a member of the organizing committee of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance.

Mr. Mathew said that cabbies had been driven out of the profession in recent years, citing the system in which six points of traffic offenses during a 15-month period will cost a driver his license for a month, and the shortening of the grace period for license renewals.